Dream #61 – Hit A Home Run

Part of my business / life coaching experience is looking inside myself for what I really want to do. As I develop an inventory of 100+ dreams, I am searching inside myself for what motivates me. I believe that a big part of this experience is to explore the unknowns of my heart, but I also think it’s a practical search of the things that can be driving forces behind the changes I need to make, regardless of what “side” of my life it’s on.

Dream #61: Hit a home run at a softball game.

Why would something as “trivial” as that make my list? Well, apparently it’s not trivial to me, because it has been on my mind for several weeks as we wrapped up our softball season without any home runs. I wondered, should I make a Goal Planning Sheet for this? Can I simply create the motivation, identify the obstacles and solutions, and then pursue them one at a time, with the end result of hitting a home run at just the right time?

Bottom of the last inning. Game is tied. Bases loaded. 2 Outs. I step up to the plate. “This would be a nice time,” I think. … a nice time to pop out. I laugh that one off, because even now I can see that it wasn’t “pressure” that caused me to fly out. It wasn’t worrying about the home run dream. It was a pitch, a hit, and a catch. You just can’t force some of these things. You can do as much as you can to prepare for them, but in the end, the timing may not always be up to me. But that does not mean I need to give up. There’s always next year, right?

That was the message I was thinking I’d be taking into the fall. Hit the batting cage, work on flexibility… if hitting a home run is really that important, there are probably some practical steps I can do to “make it happen,” or at least prepare myself for the moment so that I’m ready…. right?

All this got me thinking… why in the world does this really even matter to me? Why does something that will take perhaps maybe 60 seconds of my life, and then be forgotten by everyone but myself, mean so much? There’s a quote by Christopher McCandless‘s journal that rings true to me:

It is important not just to be strong, but to feel strong.

That’s where this hits home. I don’t have many feats of physical strength in my life. I can point to a few. They’re nothing to write home about, but to me, they mean something. And hitting a home run was the one that made it to my dream inventory during this 2010 season of softball.

Yesterday, I. Hit. A. Home. Run.

It’s our softball tourney. The last day of the season. I don’t think I’d “given up” on my dream for this year, but it was to the point that I felt it wasn’t something to focus on – it never really was, for that matter. When I go to hit, I want just that, a good hit. But anyways, I come up to bat for the second time in the day, and smash one over the outfielder’s head. As it leaves the bat, I’m thinking, “That’s a nice double, for sure.” And then it goes over the guys head, and he’s chasing it, and my team is yelling for me to keep going, and as I round third headed home free and clear, it hits me… I GOT IT! Not in the way I thought it would come – practice, seeing if I had the range, playing on a shorter field… I got it by hitting a good hit. An in-the-ballpark home run. With no errors involved at that! How great is that. I not only feel strong for getting a decent hit, I got the opportunity to run all the way around the bases as fast as I could because I was going to earn this one. When you hit one out of the park, they let you go to first and then stop to keep the game moving. But I got to round the bases. I got to cross home plate at full speed.

Loved it. Loved it. Loved it.

So this one will go down on the list of fulfilled dreams and goals. Dream #61 has been achieved, and I don’t think I’ll forget it. It’s something small, yet it’s a moment in time I can go back to any time I want and say, “That was important to me. That made me feel strong. Because I was strong.” So many other parts of life are driven by something small. Some accomplishment that brings us satisfaction that we have what it takes. This is one of those moments for me. To keep dreaming. To keep looking for where those dreams might come to pass. And to keep praising God for His creativity, and his humor, in showing me that it’s not just the accomplishment of the dream that means so much, but the dreaming itself.